A month or so ago, Duke Nukem: Mass Destructionwas announced by 3D Realms and Interceptor Entertainment. And fairly rapidly, Gearbox announced that, uh, 3D Realms had kind of sold them the rights. Needless to say, 3D Realms immediately realized that saying “Nuh-uh!” would be counterproductive and juvenile. So that’s exactly what they did!

Yep, Duke’s travails are not over yet, as Gearbox and 3D Realms are going to court. Wired’s piece includes a detailed look at the ugly history between the two companies: Fans might remember Gearbox was founded by dissatisfied 3D Realms employees. 3D Realms is essentially claiming that it has the right to make a Duke Nukem game, and that Gearbox doesn’t own the trademark anyway:

3D Realms’ affirmative defenses, as set forth in the response, are brief. In part, it says that it believes that 3D Realms owns the trademark rights to Duke Nukem, not Gearbox. Furthermore, it says, the “Asset Purchase Agreement provides that 3DR could complete development of and sell a video game with the tentative title of ‘Duke Nukem Survivor’ [and] also explicitly provides 3DR a ‘worldwide, non-exclusive license (including the right to sublicense) to use’ the DUKE NUKEM trademarks in ‘connection with the marketing, promotion, manufacturing, and distribution of’ the ‘Duke Nukem Survivor’ game.”

If you were wondering, Gearbox does, in fact, own the trademark to Duke Nukem. Just to make this weirder, apparently Interceptor, the developer, just bought 3D Realms.

This being Duke Nukem, we’re sure what should be a simple legal proceeding will drag out for years, nearly coming to a resolution several times, until it finally comes out years after everyone stopped caring. It also probably means we won’t see another Duke Nukem game for a decade. Hey, maybe by then, they’ll have written a better script!

Man Duke Nukem 3D was one of my favorite games ever growing up. My friends and I spent months and months using the level editor to build huge playgrounds to play in over the modem. I guess we’ll always have those memories… ::sheds a single tear::

Around the time the last duke game came out, I was talking to a gearbox employee. He said that they had actually pretty much completed multiple duke nukem games during that long period of time between the games, but that they were scrapped each time to focus on something else. Then they would get back to making a duke game, get scrapped near the end and so on. In any case, from what he was saying, it would seem that there are actually playable games sitting around somewhere.